Granite City heads back to Silver Cup to defend title

Granite City 1 @ Alexandria 0 (Granite City wins best of five series, 3-1)

It was an epic goaltending and defensive duel between Granite City’s Scott Murray and Alexandria’s Dom DeGuisseppi.  But, in the end, it was Aidan Verbeke’s goal with less than a minute in regulation that was the difference for the Lumberjacks as Granite City won their best of five West Division Semi-Final series over Alexandria on Saturday by a 1-0 scored.  Granite City won the series, 3-1.

Murray posted the shuout making 27 saves while DeGuisseppi made 28 saves in the loss.  The win sends the Lumberjacks, the defending Silver Cup Champions, back to the Silver Cup Championship Tournament as the field is now set. 

The six divisional semi-final playoff series winners will be placed in two, three-team pools. Teams will be seeded according to their finish in the NA3HL regular season standings. A round-robin format will be used, with the teams playing the other two teams within their pool. The top team in each pool after round robin competition will advance on to play for the Championship. The bottom four teams at the conclusion of round robin play will be eliminated from the tournament. In the event of a tie after round-robin play, a tiebreaking procedure adopted in the rules and regulations shall be used to break the tie.

Pool A: #1 St. Louis Jr. Blues, #3 Cleveland Jr. Lumberjacks, #6 Peoria Mustangs

Pool B: #2 North Iowa Bulls, #4 Granite City Lumberjacks, #5 Flint Jr. Generals

Silver Cup Schedule

Wed, March 27: St. Louis vs. Peoria, 5:00pm; North Iowa vs. Flint, 8:00pm

Thu, March 28: Cleveland vs. Peoria, 2:00pm; Granite City vs. Flint, 5:00pm

Fri, March 29: St. Louis vs. Cleveland, 3:00pm; North Iowa vs. Granite City, 6:00pm

Sat, March 30: Championship, Pool A winner vs. Pool B winner. 1:00pm

All event information including: schedule, ticket information, scouting information, venue, hotels, car rentals and more can be found on the NA3HL Silver Cup website at: http://cup.na3hl.com/

For those that can’t make it to the event, all Silver Cup Tournament games will be broadcast live on FASTHockey.

The winner of the NA3HL Silver Cup will then advance to play in the USA Hockey Tier III Junior National Championship being held in Rochester, Minnesota from April 4-8.